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Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

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Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#173
post #7

It sucks this happened to you, but like with all the PayPal hate stories, I notice you're very careful not to describe what type of business you operate.

Does it matter? PayPal and Stripe don't advertise that they will only do business with organizations with which they agree. To accept a business as a client for a mission critical service like payment processing and then summarily cancel or suspend service without notice should be able to be prosecuted the same as someone who vandalizes a physical storefront to the point they cannot open for business. This is non-tri…

> PayPal and Stripe don't advertise that they will only do business with organizations with which they agree.

Huh? Of course they do. Just one example:

https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/what-is-paypal%E...

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#174

It looks like there's a common flaw in modern abuse detection systems: they have no long-term memory. Stripe's abuse detection should be factoring in the age and long-term activity of the account, and support staff should be able to provide additional information to customers with established histories. Some of Stripe's policies make sense when dealing with new accounts, but a recurring factor in these complaints is…

long-term active accounts can get hacked. I absolutely agree with support staff needing to provide more information, but they can't just blanket whitelist any old account

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#177
I wish there were better advise but after years of e-commerce experience all anyone will ever tell you is don't use Stripe. Don't use Square,don't use PayPal. Don't use any of the faceless companies for anything remotely critical and for anything that is critical have two backups. Basically that goes for things like hosting, payment processor or anything else your business depends on.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if ChargeBee bans you, you are still dead because that's a single point of failure. No, you should have several payment processors, and rotate them regularly to check they work.

It's been a while since I dealt with this side of ecommerce - how can you have several payment processors, and rotate them, without having to handle card data yourself? (Most folks aren't really equipped to do that.)

[deleted]

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more a function of the fact that I don't want my business to be identifiable from this post than that it's a sketchy business. You'll have to take my word for it, but it's exceedingly benign.

Since HN is a community, you might have more luck getting this fixed if you posted this with your regular username? Never mind this suggestion if you have previously posted "sketchy" opinions that would harm your business, although you may be past that point now...

Agree. The OP account was created today. If it was a long-standing user with lots of comment history, then I’d be more inclined to wonder what was going on etc.

Creating a new account on here to potentially get support is just plain wrong, and needs dealing with IMO. Should never hit the front page.

Re: Stripe has decided to nuke my entire business

#180

Used to work for a “high risk” payment processor, we inherited tons of accounts that were terminated by Stripe, Square, and PayPal. Here’s one small bit of inside info that may help the newer businesses out there: Most real payment processors (e.g. banks, merchant services companies) “underwrite” a company BEFORE allowing them to process. Underwriting means they look over the business model, financials, etc and make…

Agreed this deserves a blog post. Very interested in best practices around providing payments.
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